Neil J. RubenkingAvast Internet Security 2017Avast Internet Security 2017 includes an antivirus, a robust firewall, a simple spam filter, and a wealth of bonus features. Depending upon your needs, though, a less expensive Avast product could be more cost effective.

Password manager is limited in features. Some bonus features require separate purchase.

Bottom Line

Avast Internet Security 2017 includes an antivirus, a robust firewall, a simple spam filter, and a wealth of bonus features. Depending upon your needs, though, a less expensive Avast product could be more cost effective.

Long ago, at the dawn of computer security, you could buy antivirus protection, but little more. The idea of a full security suite came later. But just what goes into a suite? By our definition, it must include antivirus and firewall protection, along with some combination of spam filtering, parental control, privacy protection, and more. Avast Internet Security 2017 doesn't offer parental control, but it checks all the other boxes. A recent update to the suite even adds a ransomware-protection feature. Consider which features you need carefully, though, because you might do better with a less expensive Avast product, or with one of our Editors' Choice antivirus utilities.

Outside of promotional pricing, you pay $69.99 per year for a three-license Avast subscription. Bitdefender, Kaspersky, and McAfee go for a bit more, $79.99 per year. Trend Micro Internet Security and Webroot tend the other way, with three licenses going for $59.99. Avast is comfortably in the middle.

As with the rest of the 2017 Avast product line, this iteration of the suite looks quite a bit different from its predecessor. The main window is a varied slate gray, with a menu at left. Green buttons and purple panels liven up the display. As you flip through the menu's pages, you'll find that hardly any of the feature icons sport the padlock overlay that means access requires an upgrade. In fact, the only padlock you'll see is on the Data Shredder secure deletion tool. Avast also reserves parental control for the next-higher tier of security, but it doesn't have an icon.

Shared Antivirus Features

Everything that's in Avast Pro Antivirus 2017 is also part of this suite, naturally. Please read my review of the antivirus to learn everything I discovered while evaluating it. I'll simply summarize that information here.

I track test results from five antivirus labs around the world. All of them include Avast in their testing, and its scores are mostly good. My aggregate lab results algorithm came up with 8.7 points for Avast, out of a maximum of 10. Others have done even better, though. For example, Kaspersky Internet Security earned an aggregate score of 9.8, and Norton came close with 9.7.

My own tests aren't quite as important when so much valuable data from the labs is available, but I do like to get a hands-on feel for each product. Avast detected 97 percent of my samples and earned a very good 9.7 points, the same as Symantec Norton Security Deluxe. However, Comodo, PC Pitstop, and Webroot managed a perfect 10 points in this test.

Avast exhibited an 87 percent protection rate in my malicious URL blocking test, which puts it in the top half of current contenders. Norton has the best score in this test, 98 percent protection, and Avira Antivirus Pro managed 95 percent.

I score my antiphishing test by comparing each product with Norton, reporting the difference in their detection rates. Of current products, only Bitdefender Internet Security 2017, Kaspersky, and Webroot have beaten Norton. Avast came in just 2 percentage points behind Norton, and did much better than the protection built into Chrome, Firefox, and Internet Explorer. It's among the better phishing detectors.

Other Shared Features

Avast Free Antivirus 2017 includes a ton of features that go beyond the essential components of any antivirus. Naturally you get all of these in the paid antivirus, and in the security suite as well. I'll run through them here, but I'd suggest you read my review of the free antivirus for full details.

The Wi-Fi Inspector checks the security status of your network and the devices connected to it. Despite the name, it works on any network, wired or wireless, unlike the wireless-only inspector in Panda Antivirus Pro. In testing, it correctly identified the deliberately dangerous configuration of the PC I use for evaluating firewalls.

Here's a surprise; even at the free level, Avast offers a full-blown password manager. It takes care of all the basic tasks that a password manager should, but not a lot more. And it syncs across all your devices, including Android and iOS devices.

The Online Security component warns you about dangerous websites and can actively block tracking by online ads and analytics. The SafePrice add-on notices when you're shopping and tries to find better deals for you. Both add-ons work fine within Avast's hardened SafeZone browser, which kicks into isolated Bank Mode when you visit a sensitive website. Other bonus features include the Avast Rescue Disk and a software-updating tool.

A couple of features that show up both in the free antivirus and in Avast Internet Security turn out to be more advertisements than features. If you try to invoke the SecureLine VPN or clean up your system with Cleanup Premium, what you get is an invitation to make a separate purchase.

Avast Pro Antivirus adds a few bonus tools of its own. Real Site protects your system against DNS poisoning, a pernicious attack that might be described as undetectable phishing. The Sandbox component lets you run sketchy programs without letting them make any permanent changes to the file system or Registry. Those two features are only in the paid antivirus, and of course, in this suite.

Robust Firewall

For firewall testing, I use a physical PC that's configured to connect through the router's DMZ port, effectively giving it a direct connection to the Internet. When I slammed the test system with port-scans and other web-based tests, it correctly put all ports in stealth mode, making them invisible to external attackers. Since the built-in Windows Firewall does the same, this test is just a baseline, relevant only when products don't pass.

The other major task for a personal firewall is making sure programs use your network and internet connections appropriately. Firewalls differ wildly in how they handle unknown programs. For example, adaware antivirus pro 12 defaults to just allowing all traffic. Panda allows outbound connections but blocks unsolicited inbound connections. Norton and Kaspersky configure permissions for known programs and keep an eye on unknowns, making their own security decisions.

Avast defaults to a mode called Auto-decide, meaning it makes its own decision about each new program. For testing, I tried setting it to Ask mode. Unlike adaware antivirus pro 12, doing so didn't result in a spate of popups about internal Windows components. That's because Avast had already created rules for those components in Auto-decide mode.

When I tried to surf the web using a browser I wrote myself, Avast first ran a check to make sure this never-before-seen program was safe. Then it asked whether to allow or deny its access to the internet. Avast, unlike many contenders, offers five levels of access, but only firewall expert should consider switching away from the default level.

If you click deny when you meant allow, or vice versa, you can open the full list of applications and correct your mistake. This list also shows all the application rules created in Auto-decide mode. If you dig deeper into the firewall's settings, you can find extremely complex rules that even I wouldn't consider editing. Leave these alone.

Protecting against network-based attempts to exploit vulnerabilities in the operating system or important apps is not precisely a firewall function, but it's often included. When I attacked a test system using about 30 exploits generated by the CORE Impact penetration tool, Avast didn't make any response at the network level. However, the antivirus component detected the malware payload for 48 percent of the exploits, identifying several of them using their official names.

In testing firewalls, I always put on my bad-guy hat, trying to find some way to disable protection. Avast didn't give me any openings. It protected its Registry settings against modification, and when I tried to terminate its processes, I got slapped with "Access Denied." The same happened when I tried to disable its essential Windows services. Neither could I simply stop the services; doing so triggered a confirmation popup that would have foiled any malware coder.

Although it doesn't block exploits at the network level, this is a sturdy firewall. If you leave its program control components in Auto-decide mode, it will do the job without a pestilence of popups.

Simple Spam Solution

Back in the day, a security suite seemed incomplete if it lacked an antispam component. These days, most people get spam filtered out by their email provider, so having a local spam filter is less important. In recognition of that fact, Avast doesn't even install the antispam component until you request it.

The spam filter checks your incoming POP3 and IMAP email, marking spam and phishing messages by modifying the subject line. If you're using Microsoft Outlook, it filters any type of email account and automatically moves those messages to the junk folder. Those using Thunderbird, The Bat!, or some other email client must define a message rule to divert the marked messages.

At the highest level, the only configuration you can make is to change how strict the filter should be. The default level is Strict. If you crank it down to Relaxed, you ensure the filter won't snag valid mail by mistake, but more spam will get through. At the No Mercy level, it should catch every spam message, but it might throw out some valid mail too. I'd leave it in the middle, at the default level.

Even when you dig into the advanced antispam settings, there aren't many items to worry about. You can set it to automatically whitelist addresses to which you send mail, which is a good idea. Outlook users can set it to whitelist everyone in the Address Book. You can also manually add addresses or whole domains to the whitelist or blacklist, for example to ensure mail from pcmag.com never winds up in the spam folder.

That's about it for settings. It's quite a contrast with the eight pages of antispam settings in Check Point ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 2017. Since most users aren't likely to mess with the settings, keeping them simple makes sense.

Ransomware Shield

Since I wrote this review, Avast has introduced a new feature called Ransomware Shield. This feature adds an extra layer of ransomware protection. Of course, in most cases, the other protective layers will eliminate any ransomware before it has a chance to touch your file. Just in case, however, Ransomware Shield blocks all access to protected files except by known good programs.

By default, Ransomware Shield protects the Pictures and Documents folders for all users. You can add or remove folders from the protected list. You can also remove certain file types from protection, though I'm not sure why you'd want to.

When a program tries to modify any protected file, Ransomware Shield checks it against cloud database of known clean programs. When an unknown program attempts access, you get a notification, and you can choose to block or allow the app. If you've just started using an obscure document editor, go ahead and allow it to run. But if the warning comes out of the blue, block the app, and run a full scan for malware. Bitdefender does something similar. Panda takes the concept farther and even blocks unknown programs from reading data.

I reinstalled Avast in one of my test virtual machines, not to repeat any other tests but specifically to see this feature in action. Not surprisingly, it worked. When I tried modifying files with my hand-coded text editor, Avast sprang into action. It also blocked file access by my simple-minded fake encryptor program. A second try with the fake encryptor failed silently.

Next I turned off all protective shields except Ransomware Shield, isolated the virtual machine from the network, and experimented with a couple of actual, real-world ransomware samples. Naturally it didn't detect them as such—I turned off that protection. But it successfully prevented them from harming my files. One sample falsely claimed to have encrypted my files; the other couldn't even manage that. The system seems to work.

A Light Touch

Getting security processes running when Windows starts up could slow the boot process. Having an antivirus checking for malware on file access could slow ordinary file manipulation activities. It's surprising how little effect most security suites have on performance these days, but I still put them through a few tests.

My two file manipulation tests use a collection of files with varying sizes and filetypes. One test measures how long it takes for a script to copy and move this large collection of files between drives. The other test times a script that repeatedly zips and unzips the collection. I average the result of multiple runs with no suite, then average multiple runs with a suite active. Avast had no measurable effect on these tests; the scripts didn't take any longer with Avast's real-time protection active.

To measure boot time, I run a script at startup that waits for 10 seconds in a row with CPU usage below five percent. That's the point where I consider the PC ready to use. Subtracting the start of the boot process, as reported by Windows, yields the boot time.

As with the file system tests, I average multiple runs with and without the security suite installed. I found that boot time went up 21 percent with Avast loading at startup, which isn't a big deal, especially for those of us who reboot only when we must.

Avast's average of 7 percent slowdown across the three tests puts it up there in the featherweight class. Webroot SecureAnywhere Internet Security Plus is still the lightest, though—it had no measurable effect on any of the three tests.

Plenty of Features, but…

For 10 bucks more than the price of Avast's standalone antivirus, Avast Internet Security 2017 gives you a sturdy firewall and a smooth, easy-to-use spam filter. If you need that spam filter, it's a pretty good deal. But you must also consider the fact that a vast portion of this suite's impressive feature set comes with the free antivirus.

Most users will do better by going with one of our Editors' Choice security suites. For an entry-level suite, this suite's level, they are Bitdefender Internet Security and Kaspersky Internet Security. Bitdefender packs a load of features that you'd hardly believe. Kaspersky's no slouch feature-wise, and its antivirus rocks the independent lab tests. And both include parental control, a feature Avast reserves for the higher-tier mega-suite. These two cost a little more than Avast, but they're worth the difference.

Sub-Ratings:Note: These sub-ratings contribute to a product's overall star rating, as do other factors, including ease of use in real-world testing, bonus features, and overall integration of features.Firewall: Antivirus: Performance: Privacy: Parental Control: n/a

Avast Internet Security 2017

Bottom Line: Avast Internet Security 2017 includes an antivirus, a robust firewall, a simple spam filter, and a wealth of bonus features. Depending upon your needs, though, a less expensive Avast product could be more cost effective.

Neil Rubenking served as vice president and president of the San Francisco PC User Group for three years when the IBM PC was brand new. He was present at the formation of the Association of Shareware Professionals, and served on its board of directors. In 1986, PC Magazine brought Neil on board to handle the torrent of Turbo Pascal tips submitted by readers. By 1990, he had become PC Magazine's technical editor, and a coast-to-coast telecommuter. His "User to User" column supplied readers with tips...
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